


To Adjust

by FlufferNutterButter



Series: Troubled Teens [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Possible Polyamory, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 20:31:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2442077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlufferNutterButter/pseuds/FlufferNutterButter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I don't know why I'm here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Adjust

**Author's Note:**

> This is my unrefined writing style. This is how all of my stories start out, before I run them through the scholarly grinder and produce finer works. This is how I like to write, but this is not what others like to read.

I don’t know why I’m here.

That’s not entirely true. I know why I’m “here”, as in “in this motel”.

I’m not even technically _in_ the motel right now, I’m right outside-but that’s not important.

I know why I’m leaning on the railing right outside the motel room, staring over it to the little concrete divider between the parking space and the building. I know, but I don’t.

If you really wanted to get down to the heart of the matter, I’m here because my sister is blind, and it’s my fault.

_“It’s not your fault,”_ she’d said, but even though her eyes were bandaged, I could see the wetness where her tears would have fallen. I could hear it in her voice, too, so it didn’t make a difference whether I saw the tear marks or not. I wound up just staring at the empty half of the hospital bed below her feet, wondering why they made hospital beds so long, and not paying attention to her. She couldn’t see how distracted I was, anyway.

It is my fault. If I’d been there to stick up for her, like a big sister should, none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t be in Georgia, a whole state away from home, with my boyfriend and his best friend and his best friend’s girlfriend.

Said girlfriend is, at this moment, standing a few feet away from me, staring at the same concrete divider, smoking a joint.

When Mituna realized I wasn’t handling the accident well, he came to my house in the early morning, just after my mom left for work, with Kurloz and Meulin in the car. I’m pretty sure they were both high. And Mituna held me while Meulin, of all people, ran into my house, rummaged through my dresser, and came out with a backpack full of clothes.

And that was the end of that; I don’t think I said a single thing until we hit the highway. I never had the chance to, since everything happened so fast, but I don’t think I would have, anyway.

I don’t even _know_ her, though. I know Kurloz well enough through Mituna, and of course I know Mituna like the back of my hand, but I don’t know anything about Meulin. I can count the times that I’ve spoken to her, this road trip included, on both hands.

Maybe I’ve been a little stony. It’s not like Meulin hasn’t tried to talk to me and engage me. I’ve been offered a joint while we were on the road, since Meulin and I were sitting together in the back. We went to some loud bar, and she tried to get me to dance with her. And I wanted to, a little bit, because everyone dancing looked so happy, singing along to the songs that were playing.

But I couldn’t.

That was last night, and after a sleepless night worrying about what I’d left at home, I suddenly understood just how much trouble I could get in for doing what I’d done. Apparently, my mother had spent the night at the office, because this morning, she called me, demanding to know where I’d gone. Mituna grabbed the phone from me and chucked it into the trunk, saying that I was going trouble-free until we got home.

I’ll admit, it kind of worked, for a while. Today was too busy for me to really think about home. But now, there’s nothing between me and my thoughts. Everything else is quiet, and I am alone.

Almost alone. Meulin’s still milking that joint.

But I barely know her, so she doesn’t count.

And I can’t help it, because these thoughts and feelings have been building up and up and threatening to overflow, and I just let them. I cry.

I don’t know how long I cry.

I do remember, after a while, that Meulin’s still here. And that sucks, because I just want to go back to our room and get in my bed and sleep, but she’s in between me and the door. So I have to wipe at my eyes and try to erase the fact that I’ve been crying, since she clearly doesn’t want to deal with my breakdown.

But when I turn around, and Meulin sees me, the joint actually falls out of her mouth and hand. In her almost-little-girl voice, she just utters one word.

“Shit.”

Does she really not know that I’ve been crying? It’s not like my outburst was quiet. But her actions betray no insincerity. She rushes over to me, taking my hands in hers, and looks up at me, pleading.

“What’s wrong? Talk to me,” she says, but then turns her head to the side, whispering; “Fuck.” She holds up a hand and hustles to the room, disappearing inside. I’m a bit shaken and confused, so I don’t quite get the idea to move, but it doesn’t matter. She’s back in just a moment, holding her hair back with one hand and putting something in her ear with the other. She switches hands and does the same thing on the other side.

“Please,” she says when she’s back in front of me, holding my hands again. I get lost, for a second, in the feel of her hands. It gives me something else to focus on, because I don’t want to talk. But then, instead of looking at her hands, I look at her face. Her eyes are big, green, ad so earnest that I can’t help but _want_ to open up.

I try to. But the second I open my mouth, my voice breaks.

“I-”

_I want to break down. I want to cry. I want to go back in time. I want to be held. I want someone to tell me everything will be okay. I want everything to be okay._

“I’m tired” is what I actually say. I push past her. “I’m tired and I want to sleep.”

But she skirts in front of me, cutting me off. And as much as I want to cry out of frustration, I don’t think I can. I don’t think I can cry at all, really. Suddenly, I’m just… void. I don’t know her. She doesn’t care. I can’t cry in front of her again.

Meulin looks tiny and ferocious, eyes narrowed and mouth pulled into a tight frown. At first, I think she’s mad at me. I realize she’s not, though, because the next thing she does is wrap her arms around my waist and hug me.

I’m not expecting it, but it feels nice to be held. And there’s something different about the way Meulin holds me, different from the way Mituna feels.

“You don’t have to bottle it up around me.” She turns her face up to look at me. “I’m here for you.”

Once again, her bright eyes hit me, and those words are the switch. The void is no longer a void but an ocean. Drops of saltwater land on my cheeks and in her hair.

We stand like that until I stop crying again.

“Come on,” she says, “Come inside.”

She pulls away and leads me back into the motel room, sitting me on her bed. Meulin cocoons me in the cheap motel blanket, but at this moment, it’s the most comfortable thing in the world. And Meulin lets me lean on her and cry as I spill everything about the accident and my hand in my sister’s blindness.

“It’s not your fault,” Meulin croons, and when she says it, I can almost believe it.

I take a deep breath at the end of my monologue. I feel like I haven’t been able to really breathe in a long time.

“Thanks,” I say.

“It’s alright. You’re welcome.” Meulin smiles. And the smile falls just slightly as she becomes distracted by something.

“Meulin?”

She fixes a strand of my hair. “I never would have… you’re so cool, Latula. I never would have known about this if you hadn’t told me. I’m glad you did.”

“Didn’t…” I can’t help it, and quirk my eyebrow at her. “Didn’t Mituna tell you this?”

Meulin shakes her head. “Nah. He just sort of called up and said ‘We’re going on a road trip with my girlfriend’. I didn’t ask. If you wanted us to know… well, you told me.”

I don’t really know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything. Meulin doesn’t either, not for a little while, but it looks like she wants to. She opens her mouth, only to close it, and bites her lip. The silence does that thing where it becomes a physical force, sealing off your vocal chords.

_“One two three, one two three-three… One two three, one two three-three…”_

It’s my phone. The phone that Mituna had taken from me. It’s in this room.

Meulin looks sheepish. She slides off of the bed and walks over to her bag, rummaging for a short second before pulling it out.

I’ve missed the call by this point, and it was Mituna, who apparently forgot that he’d confiscated the phone in the first place. I contemplate calling him back, but the phone screen goes black then. It’s dead.

Meulin looks at her feet. “Sorry…” she says quietly, “I, um, Mituna gave it to me to hold onto.” She looks up. “I can go over and see what they want?”

“Um, yeah, sure,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say. A part of me is thrilled to get my phone back, or was, because now it’s dead, and I don’t have a charger, and I’m even more disconnected from the rest of the world. I drop the phone and fall back on the bed. Meulin leaves.

_“I can’t control the way I’m moving my hips… bet you never seen it like this… I’m a monster on the floor I can’t quit…”_

I blink. That has to be Meulin’s phone. I never pinned her as a Nicki Minaj fan.

Her phone is sitting on her bed, screen facing up. The caller ID says “Purrloz”.

I laugh shortly. The call cuts off, and I’m assuming it’s because Meulin just got to the boys’ room. The screen goes back to what I assume is its normal wallpaper, covered in hearts and cats.

I don’t even really think about going over and taking it. I just do. When I slide to unlock, it prompts me to input a four-character passcode.

I raise my eyebrows a bit and take a wild guess. 3-3-8-7. C-A-T-S.

The phone unlocks, and I laugh. But this feels sneaky and dirty, so I move to put the phone back, until I see that it’s opened to her music.

“What’s up?” Meulin’s back.

I drop the phone on the bed and stand up, hands raised. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to… your phone password is really easy, though.”

Meulin smiles and laughs. “Mmm, yeah, I know.” She puts something down on my bed. We’ve traded places. “If you want to make a call, you can. I won’t tell Mituna.”

“No, it’s not that,” I say. Besides, it’s the middle of the night. Who am I going to call? “It’s just, I was looking at your music. Kind of an invasion of privacy, I know. Sorry.” I then notice her movements more clearly. “What’cha got there?”

Meulin opens up a clumsily-wrapped package. I’m pretty sure the wrapping is one of Kurloz’s shirts. “The boys brought pot.”

I just look at her. “You’re going to get us kicked out of the motel.”

She shrugs, rolling a joint and lighting it with a match from a small box she apparently keeps in her purse. “We won’t. Don’t worry.”

“Didn’t you bring your own, anyway?” I ask.

She blows smoke and smiles. “ _Purr_ loz brought the good stuff. I thought, maybe, you’d want something to relax. Mituna says you do.” The way she says “Purrloz” is strange, as is the look she gives me. She then nods to the phone. “Wanna pick something to listen to?”

I pick up the phone. Neither of us wants to sleep. So I put the songs on “shuffle”, not really caring. I don’t even recognize the first song. I don’t think it’s in English.

Meulin stands up and leans over to the table in between the beds. There’s a Styrofoam cup there, and she checks the contents. It’s empty. She puts the phone inside, and the sound improves tremendously.

While she does this, I reach up and snatch the joint, taking a drag. She grins. “Knew you wanted some.” I roll my eyes, and she plops down next to me. We sit there for a few songs, passing the joint back and forth until it’s gone. She leans into me, wrapping her arms around my waist and snuggling into the crook of my arm. It occurs to me, not for the first time tonight, that I just can't pinpoint this girl.

A new song comes on, and Meulin begins bouncing to the rhythm. I know the song, too, and we start singing softly together. Meulin smiles at me. I swear, all this girl ever does is smile, bigger and wider and bigger and wider.

When it gets to the chorus, she stands up and starts dancing. If I look back on this in the morning, I'll probably decide that this is when things start snowballing, too. Because she pulls me off of the bed to dance with her, and then we’re standing on the bed, jumping and dancing, and song after song goes by. And it's probably the pot influencing me, but I swear to God that the room sparkles when she's near me, pulling me into this vortex influenced by her unending, infectious glee. At her bidding, I let loose, and then we’re singing at the top of our lungs, laughing, and not caring a bit about anything else.

When a slower song comes on and totally throws off our rhythm, we both collapse on top of one bed, panting and still laughing. Meulin rolls on her side towards me, while I take deep breaths to calm myself. The second we look each other in the eyes, we start giggling again.

“Okay,” I say, trying to stop laughing again, “Okay, okay, okay, I-”

Meulin kisses me. I don't even know what I'm about to say, because everything just stops the moment her lips touch mine. It's not a very long kiss, more of a tease than anything else. I kiss Mituna like that, sometimes, and it drives him crazy.

Now, I understand why.

When she pulls away, she’s still giggling, but I’m not anymore. Instead, I reach out and touch her cheek.

I want to continue with the theme of “I don’t know”, and I want to say that I don’t know why I do what I do. But that’s a lie. I do know. I know why I do what I do next.

I want to kiss Meulin Leijon.


End file.
